


Trigger

by roseveare



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Attempted Rape, Case Fic, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Haven, Homophobia, M/M, Police Procedural, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3462905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/pseuds/roseveare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series. Garland and Nathan go out-of-town to investigate the case of a sadistic serial rapist, which may be linked to an old murder in Haven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> R rated gen with mention of past Duke/Nathan. Dark themes: torture/mutilation, assault/non-consent, discussion of m/m rape.
> 
> Huge thanks to Miah_Arthur to beta-reading. _Much_ beta-reading was done on this fic.

*

** I. **

"You got kids?" asked the elder out-of-town cop, and Katie Dodge opened her mouth for the most emphatic negation she could muster, but he didn't wait for her to answer before shaking his grey head and brusquely declaring judgement. "Good call. You stick with that. Kids'll break your heart. Won't matter what you try to do for them. It ain't worth it."

Even to Dodge, that seemed harsh, a few steps outside the room that smelled of blood and fear and who-knew-what. But she'd had a couple of days to get used to that from Garland Wuornos, enough to hedge that it was worry talking. It wasn't the same worry that churned in her gut, but it was cousin to it, magnified hundredfold. "He'll be alright."

Wuornos Senior just fumbled out another cigarette and lit it off the last one after half a dozen tries, his fingers juddering like a man twenty to thirty years older than he was on-file. He set the crushed paper tube to his mouth and mangled it further between his lips as he growled around it, "You don't know that. That SOB had Nathan in there for half the night. You don't know what happened, don't know nothing."

Dodge gave a cross sigh. Offering comfort to the old curmudgeon was a wasted effort. Small town cops were _so_ small town cops, and she'd never seen any cops more small town than these two. Inter-jurisdictional political correctness would probably prefer she called them weird.

 _Weird_ got trumped, though, by the horrors of the torturer-rapist's boudoir, which they wouldn't have found without Wuornos Junior. On the other hand, they _hadn't_ found the perp along with it and Wuornos Junior had got himself compromised -- to put it so very delicately -- in ways that had yet to be determined, and this was not going to win them any points with anyone.

Wuornos Senior probably shouldn't be on the case any longer, but Dodge wasn't going to be the one to tell him that. If someone with more weight to throw around wanted to, then good luck to them with it. Dodge also wasn't going to be the one to stop him strangling -- or castrating -- the bastard if he'd had time to make Wuornos' son victim number nine in the complete sense.

"You can try til you're sick but they don't damn listen." Now, apparently, she was supposed to be a sympathetic ear to unload upon. Well, shit. She'd never been that for anyone. Wuornos' stubby grey-yellow fingertip jabbed her shoulder as the cigarette in his other hand jabbed the air. "Charge off on their own hare-brained life choices. Hang out with the goddamn dangerous little scheming asswipe the town drunk dragged up into the world. Hell, I _know_ you can't control your kids, but--"

His shoulders shook. Laughter, near hysteria.

Dodge wasn't sure if Garland hated his son being gay or just hated that he'd good as owned to it in front of a room full of LEOs when he'd volunteered to act as bait. But there was hell of a lot more reason than Nathan Wuornos' sexual preferences for tension now.

"I'm sorry," Dodge said tightly. "I need to go back in there and get the feel of this sick asshole in the hope this mess can lead to catching him. You stay here and finish smoking, because I do fucking get that, even if you could not pay me a million dollars to spawn babies." But she wasn't overly surprised when Garland chucked his cigarette down and ground it under his boot on the alley floor -- still contaminating the scene, but _Jesus,_ and again, she was not gonna be the one to say it. He followed her back inside.

The changing light level from the alley to the cave-like basement accessed by an innocuous service door at the back of a nightclub was like a descent into hell. Outside, it was early morning, yellow-grey like Wuornos Senior's grizzle and nicotine-stain. Inside, it could be any time of day. And the smell--

It almost knocked her down, walking back into it. Blood and faeces over plain old mold and food gone bad. There was a bed, with actual goddamn chains, and stains she couldn't imagine lying on. The counter in the kitchenette corner of the basement apartment was laid out with glistening instruments of butchery. The perp at least appeared to have kept _those_ clean. Only the blood on the knife Wuornos Junior had had in his hand when they picked him up, already bagged and sent to evidence, had been fresh. 

The one thing they had to cling to was that the sick fuck hadn't had much time to start work.

Dodge wanted to tell Wuornos that, but he already knew, and even if he did appreciate the reminder, his reply would lay into her just the same, so like hell was she going to bother. 

This is my fault, she thought, and looked at Wuornos again, and wondered why he wasn't trying to wrap his blunt, grey hands around _her_ throat. _Had to provoke the dumbass fucking male ego_.

She stared down at the bed. At least they should have plenty of physical evidence to link the victims to this place. She heard Wuornos' foot fall land close behind her as she was staring at the blood and shreds of skin left behind on the cuffs. "He can dislocate half his fingers and both thumbs. Lot of accidents when he was a kid."

If that was an admission of child abuse, it had saved the guy's life last night, and Dodge wasn't getting involved in it, for the sake of a thirty-year-old grown man.

"CSI needs to get some more damn light in here before we can do much," she said, trying to match her belligerent shadow for abruptness. If it were a sporting event, they could both be olympic contenders. "And I need coffee. There was that diner across the road. Might as well, until the rest arrive." She needed a coffee and needed to _pee_ and she needed, fuck it, a five minute break from Wuornos' inconsolable presence, dragging her down into the mire of her own guilt. 

She wondered what was happening with her partner and Wuornos Junior at the hospital. 

*

"You remember that case a few years back?" Nathan looked up as the Chief rattled into his office, cup bashing against the blinds on the door, all thumbs for the hour of the morning and still bleary because Tuesday was bar night for the old goats on Haven's police force. "Jemmy Allen, twenty two years old. Poor kid got raped six ways from Sunday, sliced up and dumped, died a week later?"

"...Yeah." Nathan scrubbed a hand over his eyes, not really awake yet for the morning either, registering above all else Garland's seriousness. That was one of the Chief's old pet cases. Every cop seemed to end up with a few, the ones that ate at you more than the others, the ones you didn't solve. The ones that got personal, even though Garland hadn't known Jemmy -- Jeremy -- Allen, and neither had Nathan. Personally, Nathan also remembered that case because of the way Garland had pushed him around on it, which had turned out to be some kind of weird hazing ritual because he'd been about to get made detective. So he'd found out later. "I remember. We got a new lead, after all this time?"

"We don't." The Chief leaned on the door, rattling some more. "Boston might. Reading the bulletins last week, I found a string of rapes in their jurisdiction look a hell of a lot like our cold case. Those boys finally got back in touch yesterday, and they're asking if we want to come down there and help check it out."

"We?" Nathan picked up, startled.

A shrug met him. "Me and my files, but you, too, if you want. Bit more experience working with outside departments couldn't hurt. Ain't like there's anything happening here." He rolled his eyes and jerked his head around the little office. Pretty much all they'd had all week was a drunk fight and a lost dog. Parking tickets were getting exciting. 

Nathan straightened and sat back, a little surprised, a little grateful. Every so often, the Chief made these efforts to involve him, or maybe better described as advance him. Bob Winters had made it plain he was planning to retire long before Garland did, and the Chief hadn't made a secret of his plans to shape his son into his own successor. There might be places where that was frowned upon, but it hadn't raised any eyebrows in Haven.

"I'll come," Nathan said, belatedly catching that he hadn't replied. He realised he'd had his hands folded around his hot cup much too long with his drifting attention and let it go with a curse. He pressed his stinging fingers against the cool surface of his desk, then blew on them. "Uh, when do we leave?"

"Soon as we're ready. Been a while since you hit the big city, huh? Best pack earplugs and some travel sick pills."

Nathan snorted. "I'm sure I can cope."

He'd spent four years at the University of Maine. Funny thing about Haven -- small towns could be insular, sure, but so many of the people here _came back_. Or never left at all. He'd felt in himself a weird anxiety through those few years, and there had never been a doubt he'd return to Haven after. That was what you did. You came back. He couldn't recall that being the case from his fellow students, who'd come from everywhere and scattered off to everywhere, far and wide, once those years were over.

"Pack for a week," Garland said. "Probably won't take that long, but it won't hurt to be prepared. City folks're slower than us. Got that much noise going on day in, day out, sooner or later you start filtering out half what you see, end up half blind, deaf and stupid. We'll drive down after lunch."

*

Nathan was awoken to stark lighting and too much white decor, by the sound of someone shouting, somewhere close but out of sight, about somebody else's emergency. He drifted a while to that sort of accompaniment, until closer sounds intruded. Someone hung over him and spoke words into his face until he answered. He wasn't sure what was said on either side, but they seemed satisfied, and they left. Nathan stared at the ceiling for a long time, listening to conversations half a corridor away, catching the sharp medical scents in his nose, in some state which barely counted as thought. He didn't want to _think_. But he could only maintain that state, hovering away from reality, for so long.

There was nothing to stop him pushing up into a sitting position on the bed, although he was aware that, given the most recent things in his conscious memory, there were bandages and injury hidden somewhere beneath the sheets. He folded them back with a hand that had a tube taped into the back of it, feeding something into a vein, and two splinted fingers. A few dressings decorated his ribs.

The morbid, robotic fascination that had hold of him wanted to peel them off, but reasoned thought kicked in and stopped him. He asserted that the presence of the bandage was proof enough of injury.

Proof enough to establish the events he remembered.

Fear. A desperate fight against all the flight instincts that would sink his chances of real escape. Pain, threat, _fear_. The moment of opportunity, the scuffle with the chains, the struggle with the door. The running, the chase... His _feet_ , the _cold_ , the _pain_... and somewhere in that race to find help, or at least find a phone, all of that had disappeared.

"How you doing?" Jim Peppers asked, cautiously. The more approachable of the pair of city cops, he was slouching next to the doorway. Nathan wasn't sure if he'd silently come in or if he'd been there all along. He had a knack of being unobtrusive despite his height. His pale skin and white hair helped him, here, blending him in with the walls. He was an indeterminate age that had seen a lot of wear. Could've been fifty, could've been pushing seventy, but since he was still working, wise money was on the lower end of that range.

"It doesn't hurt," Nathan said.

"They gave you the good drugs, huh?" Peppers nodded sagely.

"Where's my dad?" The canny cop would catch the edge and the hesitation in the question, and Nathan felt a little like he was eight years old again, allowing that desperate plea to be almost the first words to leave his lips.

"At the crime scene. Working like a man driven."

Nathan suspected Peppers of being kind. He could make his own guesses as to what Garland Wuornos thought of his son being in this situation, and why he hadn't come to the hospital to hear the details. "So he sent you?"

"No need for that tone." Peppers fidgeted. Peppers, compared to Garland, was Mr. Sensitive, but he was still out of his comfort zone.

Nathan said, "He didn't touch me. I got away before anything happened. Except for--" His eyes fell to his abdomen.

"Sure. The doctors had a cursory look, just so you-- you were pretty out of it, they couldn't raise much reaction from you; said they weren't sure if he'd dosed you with something. Your dad gave the consent to swab for evidence back at the phone booth, even though... they said there weren't any obvious signs of... that kind of assault. Said the bruising was in the wrong places. Figure you'd know that already, though."

So much for dignity. Nathan remembered running down a Boston street wearing nothing more than a bloody shirt wrapped around his waist and sagged back with a groan. Physical pain was overrated. Dignity was already completely gone from the equation.

Raising his hands to cover his face brought the splinted fingers and lesser dressings on his torn-up hands back to his attention. Damage tally encompassed those, the knife cuts on his ribs, and probably his feet were chewed up from barefoot running on a rough road surface. He resisted the urge to look under the sheet for the bruising that was in the wrong places. He could guess.

If he'd been eight, his dad would have been there howling in his ear fit to burst. But he wasn't eight any more and dad was more interested in catching the perpetrator than hand-holding his grown son, especially given the circumstances, and he wouldn't know yet. Couldn't know this.

In fact, no-one would know, unless Nathan told them.

He looked up at Peppers. "Can I get discharged?"

The older cop shrugged. "The knife wounds aren't bad, just cosmetic. Painful, the nurse said. Nothing else of note. You dislocated two fingers and broke that little one." Nathan had done more than that, but he must have managed to successfully push the others back. "Main thing the doctors were concerned about was why they couldn't get you to wake up." Peppers' look was meaningful. They'd been more than 'concerned'.

"Exhaustion. Stress," Nathan said. "He tased me, he didn't drug me. I didn't -- I don't think I lost consciousness. I'd been awake for about two hours after that for sure. I didn't hit my head." And once he'd been out, there was little they could have done to him that would make him stir.

"Yeah? Well, they're probably gonna want to check that. Did some scans and took bloods already. Shame about the bills." Nathan groaned internally at that last part -- an extra stress he didn't need. But Peppers looked sold, and the cops would welcome having him back to pick his brain on what he'd seen, away from the overseeing eyes of the doctors. Peppers left the room to find someone to ask.

Nathan slid out of bed, grimacing at hospital clothing, and removed the tube from his hand.

If it was an anaesthetic, it was useless anyway.

*

Parents' worst nightmares, Garland had seen a few of them in his time in Haven P.D. More, back when the Troubles were in town, but some in the off-years, too. Things happened to kids, and your kids were still _kids_ , no matter what age they got to.

He'd experienced a few, as well, despite at one point in his life having no intention to experience any at all. But taking Nathan in, when it happened, hadn't been a matter of _question_. 

Looking at the interior of that damn basement was a parent's worst nightmare playing out right in front of his eyes. Blades, and chains, and the stains on the bed... The _smell_ of the place was an association he was going to carry the rest of his life. Nathan had been chained to that bed. Mangled half his fingers in desperation to slip the cuffs that were still hanging from it.

 _Alive_ , he told himself. _Stop it, damn you. The boy's alive_.

... _Of course he's alive. This twisted fuck hasn't killed any one of them since the first. But he wasn't missing any pieces that were visible. Wasn't here more than a couple of hours. Hold onto that._

Nathan, when Garland had last seen him, had looked like a victim of the worst kind of trauma. Naked, near as damn it, bloodstained, shocky-eyed and trembling, with a length of goddamn _chain_ still strewn between his ankles where he sagged against the phone booth. Garland had grasped his arm and it had been cold as ice. Pushed the damn bloody knife away with his foot, wrapped his other arm around the boy's shoulders, but he didn't react. _"Nathan,_ " Garland remembered saying. " _Nathan, are you all right. Nathan, look at me_." He hadn't looked; he'd shoved Garland off, taken two steps and fallen over. Into a dead faint, the EMTs hazarded. Adrenaline crash, shock -- the injuries themselves weren't severe enough to account for it. The desperate chase from the Hell hole he'd escaped to the phone booth might have been.

But Nathan hadn't stirred as they got him up into an ambulance. 

Dodge had asked if he'd be going with them, and it had sounded like crazy talk to Garland at that moment. Wasn't a thing he could do for Nathan by holding his unconscious hand. They had an address. He had to find the man who'd taken Nathan. Let the doctors and nurses do their jobs. He'd do his.

Hadn't taken him long to figure out that he should have gone. This room wasn't a thing he should have seen -- he wouldn't have advised it to any parent and what was he, now, but a hypocrite, if he couldn't take his own best advice? Nathan might not have appreciated him there -- that one was a toss-up -- but at least he'd have been beside him to be the first to get the answers, instead of here in this room where everything around him only pounded home all the awful questions.

What the hell had the bastard done while Nathan was chained in that bed? It had been face-up, from the slices on his chest. Face-up was better, wasn't it? Better than face-down. Face-up left an access issue.

Garland didn't want to think about those things. Hadn't wanted to when he'd thought about Nathan doing them in the past, but this was different. Wasn't some matter of choice and proclivity he could feel cranky, ashamed, and vaguely guilty for feeling ashamed about. This was violation, it -- well, it was something that a man just didn't expect to be confronted with. Not a fear you held for a _son_. Garland had never had daughters.

He hated the thought of Nathan being ashamed about _this_ because Garland had helped put that shame in him before, over Crocker. Dealt with all that shit wrong, at the time, but what he was supposed to have said, he didn't know. Lie and enthuse that his future son-in-law, or as good as, was set to be a murderer of the Troubled?

Yeah, maybe it was just as well someone else would be there when Nathan woke up.

Someone had pulled back the blackout blinds on the strips of windows high up on the walls since earlier, added some spotlights. But banishing the shadows didn't make it any better.

This had all started with a parents' worst nightmare, too. All of these poor damn kids were that... But it was Jemmy Allen that Garland remembered vividly. Jemmy, that morning, had made it to a phone booth, too, but he'd been clothed. The bastard re-dressed him all tidy-like, even patched his wounds. But he'd inflicted too much, done too little to remedy it, and Jemmy caught that infection and died anyway. Garland had been told the kid was going to make it. Wasn't too sure he'd want to, from the reports of everything he'd been subjected to. But then Jemmy died, and that _wasn't okay_ , not by a long way.

He'd sat next to Jemmy's bed waiting to interview him when he woke up. All he'd seen were the kid's nightmares, at the last. The parents saw them, too. Mrs. Allen left the room sobbing, Mr. Allen left to comfort her, and Garland had held Jemmy's hand on top of the covers, hoping he could soothe with the stroke of his thumb over one of the few clean patches in all that pile of tortured flesh. 

It changed you, to see a man reduced to that -- leastways, it had changed something in Garland, and he didn't want to see those nightmares on Nathan, who was going to live. 

...He tried not to think about how they'd said that about Jemmy, too. He felt sickened deep down, and it wasn't fair. Not when Nathan had enough old buried nightmares, leftovers from before Garland ever had a chance to make his badge and his respectability his sword and shield to assert his right to be a parent after all, to step up to the ring to fight them off.

*

Jeremy Allen had died from his wounds, but the more recent trail of assaults on men in Boston had resulted in hospitalization, psychological trauma and two cases of permanent maiming, so their perpetrator wasn't a serial killer yet. 

"Theory is he meant to leave him alive," Garland said to the city cops, Dodge and Peppers, almost by way of greeting. They stood in the foyer of the station next to a reception desk, and a box overspilling with paper files. "Theory's always been he meant to leave him alive. That poor little sod's bad luck that infection set in and he died of the complications."

"Might be good luck, if you ask some of the more recent victims," said Dodge. She had a mop of curly black hair and an abiding suspicion of the world. Her jacket sagged on her round shoulders like a bag. Her gaze didn't lessen its hostility as it moved from Garland to Nathan. The sense that small town cops gave off a bad smell was strong in her attitude.

"Nice," Nathan wasn't quite diplomatic enough to hold his tongue and got her cynical eyebrows raised at him for it.

"Just saying how 'survived' is a long way from 'unscathed'. Even the ones who didn't lose pieces. This is some shit he does to them, and he keeps them a long time to do it. Surprised as hell that the Feds aren't on this. Sure and he doesn't _kill_ them, but..." She left it hanging.

"Guess this is still small stuff in the scheme of things," Garland said. "Could ask the Feds if they want to throw in."

Dodge snorted. Peppers, her tall partner with the salt-and-pepper hair to match his name, said, "We asked you."

Garland beamed and nodded. "Well, then." At that point, he condescended to shake the guy's hand. "This is Nathan. Worked the case back then, same as me, back before he made detective." Although Nathan had yet to be introduced as Garland's son, it beat no introduction at all. He'd got used to that part going without a mention until people connected the surnames and their terse exchanges... then looked at them both weirdly thereafter, more often than not. 

A round of handshaking sort of made things more civil, though Dodge offered hers only reluctantly, her palm dry and hot under Nathan's. Possibly the brusque air was mostly their own fault, looking to take care of their own needs after the long drive from Haven. A bathroom and a strong coffee were definitely uppermost on Nathan's thoughts.

The briefing was in a side room that might be Dodge and Peppers' office, although the Boston precinct police station seemed to be in a state of disarray. Water damage showed in grey smears down walls and ripples in the floor where heavy rainfall from the storms that had swept through last week had come through the roof. Some areas were cut off by a fairly casual use of yellow crime scene tape. Desks had been shoved to one side and personal effects stacked in boxes. A lot of unpleasant photographs had been pinned to a freestanding notice board. The task force included a few more lower ranked officers no one had bothered give formal introduction to, but it remained a small and shabby affair. 

Peppers flicked on a coffee pot in the corner of the room and unhurriedly took orders for coffee. Dodge took control of the board and briefing. 

"Eight victims," she said, "if we include the Haven case. _If_ this is the same perpetrator, the Haven connection gives us a way to narrow in on potential suspects. It's a small town off the beaten track, so there won't be many who've spent time there. Of course, that depends if we can prove the connection..."

Garland blew a noise through his lips that sounded like a fart. "Sure. We even got us some evidence from that one case. Suspects, too. One fellow who skipped town afterward, though could be that was a consequence of his neighbours finding out he was a suspect. Lot of hoo-hah this case caused, small town like Haven, local boy ripped up so bad as that."

Nathan eyed him, suspecting him of playing up the small-town crap to needle Dodge, and filled in, "Tommy Decardo. But there was no real case. Circumstantial. Didn't seem to have the psychology -- psychopathy -- to do this." He tipped his head at the board. Nathan had felt kind of sorry for Decardo, but of course, there was always that hint of doubt, and he _had_ run.

"Files from Haven, cops from Haven," Dodge said to the Boston team with a wry twitch of her head. "We'll be working this case together. Seeing if we can't link their murder with our rapes."

She slapped a finger on one of the photographs on the board. This one was innocent enough, the face of a young man in his twenties with pleasant, regular features, brown hair, and a smile that was wholly at odds with its context amid the sea of damaged bodies and body parts. "Siegfried Rohne, our first victim. 27 years old, athletic, high-risk target. Our perp approached him alone in a bar and subdued him by means of a spiked drink. Rohne was gay. Before that point he thought he'd got lucky. Described the perp as 'perfect -- really good looking'. Unfortunately all we get is that and dark-haired, slim but muscular, because the bastard put out his eyes. We can't do a composite or a police sketch. The other victims, he approached and subdued by different means, and wore a mask or kept them blindfolded while he worked on them. Left his options open to be more creative, I guess."

And he _had_ been creative. The images of his final works were enough to make Nathan shudder. This was... with very few exceptions, this type of violence was alien to the police work he did in Haven. 

Detective Dodge moved on, describing in detail how the perpetrator had systematically destroyed each of his victim's bodies while he raped them at intervals during the process. They knew all the details, because as unlikely as it seemed in some of the cases, every victim had lived to tell the tale. 

Their perpetrator had started out by using his own natural good looks to pick up a victim, but had swiftly moved on to abductions by a variety of other means, albeit usually still centring on a couple of bars in a small half-street that was somewhat regarded as the local gay area. All his victims were white, smooth featured, mid to light haired, the youngest 22 and the oldest 29, and all of them in good health to begin with. Two of them had been heterosexual, so it seemed likely he'd also discarded his original technique of picking them up because it rendered unavailable victims he'd chosen by sight. 

Dodge said, "We tried asking if a man like the one described by Rohne had tried to pick up any of the earlier victims before their abduction and had been turned down. It proved futile because of the time gap and the trauma suffered by the men in between. He keeps them. Kept one of them six weeks. Apparently he can't cook, fed them all on microwave food the whole time. There's just no end to the trauma."

Garland snorted, obviously tickled by that one. "Anyone he failed to grab? Other attacks, maybe put down to muggings because they didn't succeed?"

"We haven't linked anything up so far," Dodge said, but a glint in her eye suggested Haven cops to be slightly less written off as useless than before. "It does seem like with these sorts of numbers, he'd have to have missed at least once."

*

Garland walked into Dodge's otherwise empty office to find that, as he'd figured, Nathan was back there again. He had his head back and his eyes shut, hands locked behind his head, sprawled in the chair with one foot hooked over the opposite knee. He looked wholly relaxed -- too damn relaxed for the subject matter -- and was listening to the tapes of the interviews with the victims. 

" _\--cutting me, and touching me. He wanted me hard. If touching me there didn't work he'd... his fingers inside me. Or a vibrator. Jesus..."_ A shuffle in the background of the tape, some hawking noises. A second voice, calmer but dismayed, offered another drink of water, reassuring and soothing.

"You planning to listen to them all?" Garland asked, repulsed. "You do know we're not figuring on being here more than a few days. Sixty hours of footage, and all." Sick crap, it was, and sure, conscientiousness and completeness was fine, but the accounts were all the same and all too much. A man didn't want to hear those things.

Nathan jolted up in his chair, eyes opening, hand coming down onto the table. He reached to pause the tape. "There might be a clue on here to catching him. If these people had to go through all of these things, then I can _listen_ to them." He scrubbed his fingers over his face, discomfort taking over now he'd been broken out of the listening trance. "They deserve that much."

"I'm damn sure the less other people listen to those accounts, the happier these boys would be," Garland retorted.

Nathan's face turned sour. "We're trying to _catch him._ If it had been me, I'd want him _caught_."

Taken aback, Garland stared at his son. It was an effort not to shudder at the concept of _if it had been me_. If it had been Nathan in any one of those sets of photographs, Garland would not be listening to anything, he'd be out there set to kill something. Those boys had been an age that made the thought particularly jabbing. But what, exactly, had Nathan intended by saying such a damned awful thing as that? "You just watch you don't start, what, identifying too much with these fellows? Such a thing as too much sympathy. Don't let those old habits of yours start running away with you."

" _Excuse me_?" Nathan said, squinting. "Wait... You're talking about _Duke_? You're actually talking about--" Heat was rising in his voice.

"Whoa, whoa, cool off," Garland hissed. "Whole police station of city cops you don't want to hear that shit."

"I don't believe you," Nathan hissed back. "This has nothing to do with me or what happened between me and Duke, which was -- that was _ages_ ago, now, and it's irrelevant. I want to help these men because _nobody_ should have to go through that. Or is basic compassion dependant on sharing a sexual preference, now?"

Garland didn't much appreciate that tone of accusation. He'd been reasonable, he figured -- more reasonable than a lot of men of his generation would be. He'd have been more comfortable with it if Nathan had opted to take up with men who _weren't_ Crockers, but he was pretty thankful that the kid seemed to like women just fine as well, and that so far as he knew, it had never become a matter of public gossip otherwise. A thing like that could hamper you if you were ever going to be Chief of Police some day.

He also felt he was pretty reasonable opting not to chase the subject, but his noise of disgust and dismissive gesture seemed to anger Nathan. His face flared like he'd been deadly insulted and he turned sharply away to jab his finger down on the tape recorder again.

" _When he'd fuck me it was like he didn't try to hurt me, then. He was gentle, even. I hated it, but I got to hope that he'd do that, and not the rest. You understand?"_ The voice of the young man on the tape was raw and desperate to _be_ understood. " _I didn't like it. I hated it. But I never knew what he was going to do next. Except when he was doing that, and at least I knew that he wasn't going to hurt me."_ The rambling, shocky voice paused and Garland shook his head and only didn't put his fingers in his ears because it might be taken as a show of weakness.

"Damn it, Nathan," he muttered, and took himself over to switch on the rattling coffee pot, hoping the din it made would block the voices.

A few minutes later, Detective Dodge walked in with a couple of officers trailing on her heels. After that, Peppers shuffled in like he could smell his specially-bought packets of coffee brewing from anywhere in the building.

Garland slammed a cup down in front of Nathan, letting it spill slightly. Nathan picked it up without comment, blew on it and sipped at it carefully, then blew on it again and put it down, evidently deciding it was too hot. He ignored Garland totally throughout the whole process.

" _I don't know where he went when he left,"_ the tape was saying now, at least having moved on. " _He never spoke casually, and I..."_ Wretched laughter. " _I was afraid to ask questions. Certainly anything like that. I was just glad he was gone. He wasn't there for hours at a time, I think. It was difficult to be sure, with the blindfold, but it got so I knew. Or I thought I knew. I never had any chance to get away, even when he was gone. My wrists were always fixed. Metal. The bedframe was metal, too. Solid. I couldn't break it even if I could've walked after he carved up my feet."_

Two of the officers had struck up a conversation next to the board that wasn't remotely related to the case, and Nathan pulled a sour face and switched the tape off again, unable to hear it properly with the numbers and noise present in the room. Garland gave the two officers a nod. Denvers and Aspin. He was getting to know the folks here, now, second day and all, and they were decent enough cops even if they hadn't had any luck breaking the case. 

Nathan floundered a minute, scraping his notes together. Then he caught Dodge's eye and stood up. "Detective Dodge... I keep wondering if it might be worth canvassing the areas the abductions centred on to find out if any attacks weren't reported."

She grunted. "Those places only come alive at night, and lotsa luck we'd have, asking questions there."

"The people there will want him found and stopped, too, surely?" Nathan persisted. "He's hunting from the gay community. They'll want to make that community safe again." There was an edge in his voice, and damn it, to Garland it was obvious, too much on show. Garland kept telling himself -- had spent years telling himself that Nathan didn't identify as one of those people. Duke had been an anomaly, damn it (and that was no surprise -- goddamn Crockers). "They'll answer those sorts of questions."

"Maybe to _you_ ," Dodge shot back, her tone responding to his hostility in kind. "Rest of us just get insults and lip, like not catching him already is somehow deliberate and means police don't give a shit about homosexuals. In fact... you look pretty much our perp's type. Maybe a little topside age-wise, but hey, you should do your asking, it could find us a different sort of lead."

"Now, then--" Garland started up, hearing his own voice gruff and raw.

Peppers was shocked, and trying to keep it level. "No. We don't operate that way. KD..."

Nathan was looking at the pictures on the board. All those horribly harmed young men, who none of them had the slightest idea what they were walking into. A chill went through Garland at the look on his son's face. Looking _at_ his son's face... The faces on the board could've belonged to brothers. Killer had a type, all right, and the girl cop wasn't wrong. 

"All right," Nathan blurted, all but shouting over their arguments. "Why don't we give that a shot?"

*

" _Like hell you'll do it,_ " Garland had said, and the whole scene had exploded into an embarrassing father-son argument in front of a good chunk of Boston PD. Why Nathan couldn't just hold his tongue, keep his preferences to himself and act like a goddamn police officer, Garland didn't know.

Thinking about his fury with Nathan didn't help when that bastard who'd brutalized, violated and cut up those other kids _had his boy_ , and who the hell knew what he could be doing to Nathan right now? It didn't matter that the damn fool had dropped himself in it, and embarrassed Garland in front of his hosting police department in the process. All he could think about, over and over, was those damn pictures flashing through his head. The horror stories the girl detective had reeled off like she was discussing a grocery list. Those things. _His_ boy.

"How the hell can you have lost him? I thought you had a wire on him! It's a goddamn twenty-building half-block and you got a car at each end, or were they just too busy guzzling coffee and playing Snake on their phones? That's my boy out there!"

"Calm the shit down," Dodge said, and like it mattered, "I didn't know he was your fucking son when I suggested this, okay? I'm _sorry_. It wasn't like we ever expected we'd really trigger the guy's interest. He _is_ older than the other vi-- the others. It was to ask the _questions_ , not the rest!"

Peppers, on the radio, said more usefully, "If he used a taser, it could explain why the wire went dead," sounding like he was internally cursing but annoyingly calmer than Garland could entertain right now, and remarkably calm considering he was one of the cops Garland had just accused of sitting with his thumb up his ass.

"If that's true, he's gotta get six foot three of unconscious body away from the area now," Dodge snapped. "We haven't fucking lost him yet."

"I knew I should've been down there with him," Garland growled. He started striding down the corridor, ahead of Dodge, who ran to keep up. He hauled his coat on as he went and fingered his gun. 

He heard Dodge mutter, "Yeah, _right_ , and a fat lot we'd have gotten out of anyone, with you there watching your pretty boy charm the socks off the patrons for information."

Garland felt his face twist. The girl was talking crap. Nathan wouldn't say boo to a goose where romance was concerned, wasn't going to flirt for answers in a bar full of men even if he did swing that way. But even if that weren't so, he could imagine how a grizzled old small town fellow like Garland Wuornos would stick out in a place like that. Some joke it would be, trying to make himself useful among the clubs and pubs of city nightlife. He'd sat in the station hanging on the reports back in from Dodge's officers, though, because he sure as hell wasn't going back to their hotel to sleep when Nathan was out there working this.

Didn't change his plans now. "I am going down there to turn over every armpit of a bar on that block until I goddamn find Nathan. Then I'm going to make sure he gets his ear chewed off good and proper for giving his old man this sort of fright. Blasted kids..."

"Wuornos, damn it," Dodge growled, stumbling out of the station after him. "Hey, you old fool! You even gonna let me drive, or do you know the city this well already after two days?"

They zoomed down with the lights on and Garland was true to his word, turning over every inch of the freakshow. But he didn't find Nathan, and he didn't find anyone who'd seen a thing. One of Dodge's officers found someone who claimed Nathan had left the bar where they knew he'd been last, and the bar staff could remember ten guys who'd been in that night who matched the description of the perp given by that first, blinded victim. None of that helped one whit.

"He's just plain jumped people before, and that's the truth," Peppers said, joining them, looking about as out-of-place under the neon lights as Garland. "He must have done it this time."

"Uppity confident fucker," Dodge growled. She looked at Garland. "We'll get him back, Wuornos." Her face was darker than usual with anger and exertion. "We did _not_ just throw one of our own to this jackal."

'One of our own' now, when the chips were down, thought Garland, though the Boston detective had barely wanted anything to do with them before. Garland could have said something about that, but he plain didn't have the _energy_.

*

"You say they invited us, but Boston PD don't seem too thrilled to have us here," Nathan said, slinging his bag onto the bed and looking around the plain, budget hotel room that he was going to be sharing with his father, with its two narrow, hard beds. He anticipated it was going to be strange and frustrating, and the part of him that craved his own space was already itching to be checking out again, even without the consideration that he'd also be sharing space with the _Chief_.

Garland snorted. "Guess Chief Orlsen didn't bother consulting his officers for their opinion on the matter. Cooperation, my ass." He moved a picture from its nail to hang it over a 'no smoking' sign before he'd even ditched his luggage on the bed, glowered at the smoke alarms and walked to the window, where he started unpicking someone's efforts to make it hard to open. He was hanging out of it with a cigarette lit before Nathan had unpacked. "Howdy. You have a good day there." He sketched a sarcastic wave down to someone looking up from the street.

They were only one floor up. Nathan pressed his lips together and gave the old man a hard glance. It was the first time they'd stayed out of town on police business, but he'd been with dad on cases that crossed departmental boundaries before. When Garland got like this, it worked like a good cop/bad cop arrangement. People would confide in him rather than approach his father. As it was, there was little he could do by comparison to offend people. He'd cultivated a poker face to the old man's antics.

"Don't forget they're expecting us back at the station within half an hour," Nathan said, still a bit embarrassed at the brusque way Garland had manoeuvred their escape. "You wanted to eat, too."

"Yap, yap." Garland waved him off. 

Nathan went to arrange his toiletries in the adjoining bathroom -- at least they had one of those, though the porcelain was old and stained. He freshened up and when he came out, Garland was standing on a chair, fiddling with the smoke alarm set into the ceiling. He gave a sharp bark of victory and then snapped the cover back and came down from the chair with only a minor hesitation and "oof!" for his knees. He pocketed something. "Don't look like that, I'll put it back before we go. C'mon, now." He nudged the chair back to the end of the bed and grabbed his coat. "I could smell the sausages frying in the joint down the street. Best grab 'em before Dodge and Peppers come looking. Could eat a horse. Sure as hell didn'tneed that briefing on the heels of the journey down."

"Sure." Nathan grabbed his own coat. He locked the door behind them.

"Those sound like real names to you? Dodge and Peppers...? Dodge and... Was the dark-skinned girl Dodge, or Peppers?"

Nathan couldn't remember.

"What, you leave all your observational skills in Haven?" Garland tsked and shook his head, as if it was of no relevance that he obviously couldn't remember either. "This is gonna go great."

*

Jim Peppers had more time than most of his work colleagues for small town cops. His daddy had been one, after all, and small towns had their own specialised varieties of problems. Didn't negate an officer's worth just because the population he was responsible for wasn't so dense as in the city.

These two, he'd thought, weren't so run-of-the-mill, but they weren't particularly extraordinary either. The older one was bright but blinkered and stubborn. The younger was bright but reserved to a fault.

The only time Peppers had heard him say more than five words together before the hospital room was when he'd stood up and volunteered to be bait for a serial rapist.

Sure and he was the right physical type, and just about young enough, and maybe gay enough or just confident enough of being able to project it -- Jim was no real judge. Wuornos' dad had looked pissed as all hell, though, and Jim was more confident in gauging that piece of parental judgement.

As for the fact their guys only discovered their visiting cops _were_ father and son had been when that argument exploded... well.

The kid pulled himself together pretty well, considering the injury tally. Surprising to see him moving around so easily. But he was quiet -- withdrawn, preoccupied, quieter even than _before_. Peppers had no business faulting him for it, but it seemed like something was amiss. He was used to crime victims in various states of trauma, but this was close-lipped deliberation from someone who had something to _hide._ Jim Peppers had dealt with a good few of those, too. 

Wuornos Junior had lost his shoes -- in addition to every other scrap of clothing bar the bits of his shirt, but he'd had a change of everything else back at the hotel, where Peppers had diverted to grab his overnight bag for him. For shoes that fit, they'd have to see if he could pick some spares up at the station, else he'd need to go shopping today. For now, he didn't seem any more bothered by having only thin hospital slippers on his feet than any of his hurts. 

The dark shirt and jacket didn't make him look much less pale than the white hospital smock and bandages, but they seemed to return a confidence to him that made Jim, in turn, more comfortable talking to him. As he looked at Wuornos Jr. emerging, dressed, to stand wavering out in the hospital corridor, Peppers had no doubt that the physicality and the extremity of his abduction had been real. The pain of the deliberately inflicted cuts to his chest, the ragged mess he'd made of his feet, the urgency and terror that must have driven that desperate, near-naked run. So why did he feel so instinctively that something was false here?

"I'm ready," Wuornos said, his tone as flat as that dead something that had been in his eyes since he opened them. Peppers realised he'd been staring, and it definitely didn't figure that Wuornos should be more on the ball than he was. The younger man's stare grew harder in misinterpretation of the pause. "I was there less than three hours," he reiterated. "He cut me. He _touched_ me. But he did not do anything else. I'm not even badly hurt."

The feet were probably the worst, due to the sheer area of the tissue damage. Didn't look like they were bothering Wuornos much, but the dressings were very visible in the open hospital flip-flops.

Peppers said, as levelly as he could, "I know. No one thinks he went the whole way. Everyone on the task force knows that." Or Peppers would see to it they did. Lucky for the kid, in a way, that he was working so far from his home area. This could reasonably be kept from ever getting back to his fellow officers in Haven. Going home, he'd have almost a clean slate. "Your dad knows."

Wuornos Jr., Nathan, snorted. "It's not like he could think any less of me." Then he clammed up. Peppers _saw_ it, a wholly visible process. It was probably too much to say, and had only been said because the guy had been tased, cut up, felt-up, and was still hovering in the aftermath of the sort of scared-sick trauma Jim couldn't even imagine.

Peppers took the few steps needed to close in and grip the guy's arm, because hell if he knew what Wuornos wasn't coming clean about, but this was still real. "He doesn't think like that, son. He was going crazy when he thought you were in danger."

Wuornos looked unconvinced but grateful, and nodded slowly. His eyes slid down to Peppers' hand on his arm, and he stared at it with such a _strangeness_ , but he accepted the help as he moved forward, even though he didn't so much as stumble on his torn-up feet.

The hospital didn't want to discharge him, not after the trouble they'd had trying to wake him, but they couldn't keep him. Peppers felt kind of obliged to pull him aside by the elbow -- guy took some tugging to notice -- and emphasize that he did not _have_ to be discharged or return to the police station. His injuries aside, he'd been up all the night he'd not been unconscious. He could give a statement now and go back to his hotel.

"I'd rather return to help out with what I _learned_ as an officer than give a statement as a _victim_ ," Wuornos returned, and honestly, Peppers couldn't blame him for that, so left it alone.

They drove back to the station in mostly silence, Wuornos like a human blank in the passenger seat next to him. Something was clearly wrong, something not obvious, but all Peppers could really do about it was hope his dad knew how to handle it.

Turned out Garland Wuornos was still out at the crime scene with KD. Nathan seated himself in a corner alone and made repeated attempts to contact his father on a station phone, snappishly finishing on a hushed message consisting of, "I'm back at the Boston station, and I need to talk to you _now,_ damn it."

Peppers sighed. "Interview room," he said, as Nathan slammed the receiver down. There were enough officers milling around that, even though he'd rather do this more informally, the need for privacy was non-negotiable.

Wuornos Jr.'s head lifted, jaw squaring, eyes stony. His hand fisted on the desk in front of him, then loosened again at a slight _crunch_ from one of his unbandaged fingers. He aborted a dismayed look down to wipe his expression clean again. "Fine."

*

He came back to full awareness naked, face-down on a lumpy surface with his nostrils trying to close from the sheer assault on his sense of smell. He could feel the weave of coarse fabric underneath him, damp and oddly tacky against bare skin. That and the cold faded into background next to the jarring reality of his nudity and the vulnerability of his position. 

Movement _clanked._ His arms were twisted awkwardly over his head. Every muscle in his body ached and it felt like all the energy had been squeezed out of him, leaving him limp and useless. His head ached faintly. Who the hell said tasers were humane...? 

He didn't think he'd actually lost consciousness, though after the world splintered into confetti anyone could have done anything to him in that grey space, and he had partial, shadowy memories of his body being handled amid the repeated taser shocks to his back and torso. His breathing sharpened and rasped through his aching jaw, and instinctual wild thrashing proved his energy was returning to him, and also that his hands were fixed in a manner which indicated he'd originally been tied face-up, and his ankles weren't fixed to anything but each other.

Once he was facing upward, with arms looser and no longer quite so stretched and twisted above him, he could see a one-room basement apartment -- _basement_ said by the lack of windows anywhere but a few covered, high up slits on one wall. It was dingy in the corners, but there was a strip light hanging from the ceiling above the tiny kitchenette, and the counter which marked the divide between the kitchen area and the rest of the room was very close to the bed. The strip light swung slowly, with a rhythmic groan and squeak, joining in the clatter from Nathan's struggles, and shadows were thrown around the room even though the glow cast off in the immediate area was bright.

Gleaming metal filled Nathan's eyes, lined up on the counter of the kitchenette.

The room was empty of anyone other than himself and he thrashed again, heaving at his hands, breath tearing out of him in fast, frantic pants. It was the skin-crawling _knowing_ , the automatic revulsion of someone else having had his body at their mercy, that stole his control. He'd been undressed. This guy -- he _knew_ what this guy _did_ \--

Stop. He made himself still. The cuffs were -- they were more like chains than handcuffs, some DIY home-soldering job. His wrists ached faintly inside them, the metal concentrating the cold of the unheated, damp basement. Nathan shuddered as he remembered the victims' accounts of spending _weeks_ here. They'd said that it was heated sometimes, but it was always cold, because they'd always been unclothed. But Nathan flexed his fingers and felt the give, heard the crunch, desperation adding force and an utter lack of care for damage. The old nerve problem he'd had as a kid, all the breaks and dislocations because he couldn't feel how hard he was stressing bone and joint. His hands were far more mobile than they should be. He could do this. He could slip the cuffs. He could--

The door rattled and he froze. A moment later, it was opened. The moment hung there. It was so _peculiar_ , oddly shaming -- embarrassing -- to be locked face to face with the man who'd put him in this position. He had a flash memory of that face, now, the moment before he'd dropped unconscious. He remembered walking around a corner and into a _jolt_ that sent his senses spiralling down the drain. He also remembered that face from earlier in the night. A match to their first -- second? -- victim's descriptions, he'd thought at the time. But a lot of men had matched. Nathan didn't ever remember that face from _Haven_ , back during the Jeremy Allen investigation, but maybe dad would.

\-- _No mask._ Nathan's thoughts caught up abruptly. _That means he's already planning to kill me or blind me._

The second of those options was its own kind of horror. Maybe the perp thought Nathan had already seen too much of him back when he was lying on the ground in the alley, maybe it was the amount of contact between them back in the bar that had swung the decision, but the truth was that Nathan would probably never have remembered, never linked the faces together, without the reminder.

"Let me out," Nathan said, the rising anger somehow the only reaction he could muster to replace the shame. His reactions went against all logic and training. This wasn't a position he'd ever expected to find himself in. Even volunteering -- so _easily_ \--

This guy didn't do things quickly. He took weeks. He took body parts, he took function, he _took_... but he didn't kill. Nathan could still slip the cuffs. But he needed to wait until he was alone again. To try now -- even if he was fast enough to free his wrists, he'd still be left facing the enemy with his legs restrained. There was far less chance he'd get away at all if he tried it while _watched_.

It landed on him, horribly, that he would have to absorb the first session, whatever it brought.

He had to _wait_.

"Why the hell would I let you go?" the guy said, his eyes lighting up with lust and cruelty. "I just went to a lot of effort to _get_ you."

He came over and sank down, sideways on Nathan's chest, leaning with his full weight. Bucking didn't help -- from Nathan's position, with his manacled feet too close together to brace well, he couldn't lift another man's weight as well as his own. A hand curled up Nathan's jaw, and he jerked his head from it, but it followed, stroking his face. The other hand cupped his groin. Already cold, he felt himself shrivel further beneath it. He changed tactic with the hand on his face and pushed into it, looking to sink his teeth into flesh. The hand locked itself under his chin and shoved his head back, clicking his teeth together.

"No."

The other hand clutched tighter, too.

The threat was -- there wasn't even a threat voiced, but with one word, it felt like his captor had asserted control. Nathan's neck ached from being thrust back, and as the moment hung, the pressure only increased from both quarters. Breathing was shortly going to become an issue. Neither hand let up until their owner saw desperate surrender start to cloud Nathan's eyes.

"Okay," the perp said smoothly as his grip relaxed, though his hands remained. "You stay there. You behave and don't struggle. I'll start slow. Ease you in gently."

Nathan told himself that it was entirely in tune with his plan; that he wanted this to start slow -- that suggestion _should_ earn his compliance. If he hadn't been confident he could slip the chains on his hands, it would have been another story. Resistance to the last, no matter how this man threatened or hurt. But having a _plan_ , he only had to make it through one session. He could do that. He could be compliant for that.

Especially if it started slow.

Nathan couldn't level out his breathing. _Thought_ was more important... He had to manoeuvre this situation, he had to start to _think_. The perpetrator's methods had varied per victim, had varied depending on reaction, and he _had_ those stories. He knew how each of those men had acted, and how this man had _reacted._ Pride would create some percentage of muddied information, for sure, but...

He had to triage. He would rather be cut than raped. But he'd rather be raped than mutilated. He swallowed hard and -- _yes,_ that particular equation was the correct one, _had_ to be the correct one. The other way made no sense. All evidence they had indicated that fighting back and pissing this jerk off at the beginning would make him more likely to cause pain first, but it would also make it entirely _possible_ he would start with something drastic and permanent.

There was no way to guarantee avoiding both those options. He had to avoid the worst. He could reasonably ensure that his body didn't suffer any permanent damage tonight... if he didn't fight.

It was hard to do that when the perp stood up and all his natural reactions screamed to dislocate his fingers to get _out_ of the cuffs; to at least try to avoid what was coming his way. The perp had turned his back, and he was walking toward the implements on the kitchen counter. It was good enough -- his back turned! -- it was surely better than waiting and risking--

Somehow, Nathan held himself. Sexual violation was not worse than what he'd seen of what this man could do, and it was not guaranteed. At least three of the victims had not been raped until the second or third day.

Two of them were the ones he'd started out by mutilating.

Nathan swallowed and squirmed. A joint in his hand went _clunk_ , and he'd not even realised he was twisting it with that deliberation. He made himself stop. Couldn't risk betraying that the cuffs might not hold him.

There was a strange noise, then the man turned around. One of his hands held a knife. 

Nathan almost breathed a sigh of relief. Hid _that_ reaction, just in time. Choices could always change, and he could not arouse suspicion by letting on how much he knew about his predicament. His captor had said nothing yet to indicate finding the wire in his clothes.

The perp came back with the knife. Leaning over him, this time, he pressed the blade to Nathan's throat and the empty hand returned between Nathan's legs. His fingers were slick, sliding easily over skin. Nathan's body's instinct to move was controlled by the positioning of the knife. His breath hitched and a spasm shot through him, his torso arching upward as his hips tried to retreat from the intimate touch, even as he pressed his head back trying to avoid the blade. A horribly small, helpless noise left his lips.

"Good," the perp said. "One way or another, I'll have you standing proud, not shrivelled and shy." It took a moment to realise he was referring to sexual arousal. 

He stroked, and Nathan's breathing changed again, desperate fast gasps. 

"No--" Damn it. Begging wasn't going to make him _stop._

The knife drew beads of blood from Nathan's throat as the other hand stroked and his body couldn't help but jerk into it. Even though arousal was as far from what he felt about this situation as could be-- 

"Don't worry. Going to make sure you enjoy everything I do." The clutching hand finally moved away as he changed position, and his chest brushed over Nathan's erection as he leaned forward to slide a lingering caress over the skin of Nathan's chest instead, eventually meandering down over his hip to settle on his thigh. The man carved a slow, thoughtful slash across Nathan's ribs with the knife. 

Nathan's body jerked again within its confines, but the pain was welcome by comparison to the intrusive touch.

Was that some way to excuse the rest? Inside this man's head, if his victim was aroused, if his victim _came_ , did that make the cutting and anything else he did _okay_?

This was where he wanted the perp's attention. The knife, the delicate patterns it drew across his skin. Every time the knife bit, his body jolted. He'd intended to play up his reactions, in the hope they'd entice his captor to focus there, yet in the unravelling, there was no _need_ for that, even if he could have found the space in his mind for the act. Nathan shivered, waiting, when the knife rose from his skin, anticipating its descent. When his erection started to wane, the hand returned and worked over him again. Nathan shuddered and groaned, and somehow held onto enough sanity to not try to wrench free from the cuffs then and there, in the worst position possible to put up any fight. More unhurried bloody nicks joined the patterns decorating his chest. 

The perp seemed to appreciate his reactions increasingly, pausing more often to study his face and the strained lines of his body. 

Finally, he put the knife down on the crease of Nathan's thigh. "You hang onto that for me. Gonna be right back, all ready for you." His hand made a final grope, then he got up, fondling himself now, and headed for a door. Bathroom, bedroom maybe -- whole house else was in this room; couch, TV, kitchenette. Nathan knew that he'd worn a condom to rape the other victims. Presumably that was what he was preparing now.

It wasn't the best chance, but he wasn't waiting for the next one. His fingers _crunched_ like they'd always been meant to bend into those shapes, and it was easy, easier than the damage should be -- the _pain_ was easy, knowing that it came with the gift of escape. Freed of the cuffs holding him down, he swung off the bed. His tied ankles were clumsy, the length of chain between them long enough for shambling steps, long enough to spread his legs, but hampered him too much to really fight, and there was nothing he could do about that. He couldn't break his feet and run away on them even if he could have broken his feet.

His clothes were in a pile on the floor. He hadn't had his gun or badge with him in the bar; after all, it had been decided that his questions would play better coming from a civilian. His phone didn't seem to be there. He couldn't pull his pants on over the chains, and didn't have time to dress anyway. It was the phone he had wanted. His shirt had been torn and the non-functioning wire was bunched inside the mangled remnant of it. He wrapped the shirt around his waist and curled his misshapen fingers around the knife, picking it up from where it had fallen onto the floor.

He heard a toilet flush. Stumbled for the door. His crosshatched chest was oddly neutral in the sea of discomfort, but his hands and arms were a blaze of agony and his genitals ached, and the shirt didn't give him back much modesty as he moved. He had to get away. Had to find a _phone._ Police. Safety. _Help_. The lock on the front door was one which latched on the inside, no key needed for his escape. Careless... but then, every previous victim had had no hope, sealed and chained down, with normal, undamaged hands.

He lurched out of the door, aware of a howl of fury and of pursuit moving swiftly behind him.

He didn't know when he lost the pursuit. He barely remembered the interval between then and huddling into the bottom of a rare telephone booth, clutching the receiver against his ear and listening to the answering voice of 911.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

**II.**

Garland had been in the first responding car when they found Nathan clinging to the phone, all hunched up like he was a kid again, like that thing was his old teddy bear. He'd stuttered answers to questions with wide eyes and not enough reaction otherwise, then when they'd got him standing up, moving, he'd keeled over in that faint.

Might not have been his fault. Doctors _had_ said that if there were sedatives in his system they might have had a lingering nausea/dizziness effect, or account in some part for the hopelessly stoned look.

That Nathan had been naked was the part that preyed on Garland the most. He'd watched as they got Nathan into an ambulance and cut those damn shackles off his feet. But before collapsing, Nathan had managed to give them the location of where he'd been held, so Garland had pulled himself away to go with Dodge, rage driving him all the way to that place. Rage was better than despair, then letting in any thoughts of the worst questions, and the answers he didn't have.

The basement was slap bang in their target area. That was how the bastard had got Nathan out under their noses; he _hadn't_ gone out, just down. Wasn't like they could get warrants to search every property, and every rat-infested, damp historic basement off every property, that they'd not even know was there short of scouring damned archival city plans.

No surprise that the perp had cleared off; maybe when he'd realised he'd lost Nathan and his location was blown, maybe even as they approached with guns drawn, but Garland had hardly anticipated he'd be dumb enough to still be there. Though he'd _wanted it_. Hell, had he wanted it. Instead, he and Detective Dodge spent hours going through the sick bastard's stuff in that God-awful nightmare of an underground room, trying to establish identity and any clues where he might have gone. 

They found a bunch of what Garland took to be trophies: bits of jewellery, masculine stuff (not that he'd wear it), other random things a guy might carry in his pocket. Some of them matched things the other victims had said they'd lost. 

There were more trophies than victims by some way.

"Did he kill them and dump them?" Dodge wondered. "Or did he just let them go intact enough they could crawl off to patch themselves up, lick their wounds and _never report this_?" She pulled a sour face. "Enough women don't report rape. Men don't. Not if they can help it."

"Men don't," Garland agreed.

"Sorry," she said, again. But by that time, that was after they'd heard from Peppers -- after the first sickening foray, at the point they'd sloped off for the coffees -- that the doctors said that didn't seem to have happened to Nathan, so that apology was another waste of breath.

Garland pulled Nathan's keychain from Crocker out of the pile and stuffed it in his pocket before it could get bagged with the rest. Evidence be damned.

When they finally emerged the second time into the open air, it was ten o'clock in the morning and three messages from Nathan and two from the hospital chirped to announce their arrival one after the other on his phone. The calls from the hospital, he'd have been making himself even crazier over if he'd not received them late alongside Nathan's -- whose messages all consisted of varying degrees of annoyance, saying that he was back at that wreck of a building the Boston folks called a police station, and where the hell was his dad? Pissed and stubborn and clearly in no kind of a coma.

Garland felt cold that he'd missed the calls and hot with hope, relief and anger all at once, and he was pretty sure Detective Dodge wasn't any more enchanted by his attitude by the time they were shooting back through the streets to his son's side.

*

"You _what?"_ Garland hissed sharply. This was not the conversation he'd been so grimly anticipating when Nathan dragged him aside into an interview room practically the first instant he saw him. He was wearing shoes a few sizes too big for his feet, that clomped under his too-heavy, too-awkward steps. When they'd found him, he'd been shackled. He was moving like he was still shackled.

"I can't _feel_ anything! You remember, when I was eight years old and broke my arm? Of course you do. It lasted for nearly a _year._ Doctors said it was some kind of trauma-induced neuropathy. I don't know what to do, but I didn't want that hospital to _hold_ me -- difficult enough hauling myself out of there, they'd thought I was in a _coma_!"

"No. No, goddamnit," Garland agreed, grabbing Nathan's elbow and squeezing it tight. Shit. Boy couldn't feel a thing. Touching him was irrational. "Jesus!" And he'd thought a week or so out of town wasn't long enough to worry about setting off any Troubles. "You did the right thing. You mark my words, wait til we get back to Haven, it'll clear up just like that." He clicked his fingers. "Just like that. And if it doesn't," because Nathan was always a bit too credulous about the Troubles, "well, then, you can speak to Doc Hennessey or to Eleanor, who know what they're talking about. Don't need our old problems complicating this situation. Don't need to worry the big city detectives about it." Injecting as much sarcasm into that as he could.

"And in the meantime, I can't _feel_!" Nathan half squeaked back. "I can't feel my _feet_ , I can't feel my _hands_ , I could _barely_ sign my damn signature on the release papers, and I don't know if I can safely handle a gun! How the hell am I going to work through this?"

Garland bit down on his lips and shook his head. Of all the stubborn... "You're not working through this, you were never meant to be working _like_ this, we just came down here for an exchange of information and to cast our eye over Boston's suspect pool." He shifted his grip from Nathan's arm to his shoulder. "Come on, we need to get you back to the hotel. You even get any real sleep last night?"

Nathan tried to throw him off, but had some kind of problem judging the movements. "I don't need sleep. I need to catch this bastard. He fucking assaulted me!" His face slammed shut like a trap at Garland's reaction. "Not that."

Garland felt his face burn and couldn't hide that reaction. This guy had -- whatever the doctors said about what things hadn't been poked where, he could see how Nathan _felt_ about it.

Nathan didn't feel at all.

Garland grunted and nodded. "Fine. And I'm gonna help catch this bastard, so that makes two of us, and it still doesn't alter you needing to sleep now, or me either. Back to the hotel for the both of us while the Boston boys -- and the filly -- do the legwork and finish picking over the perp's apartment."

Nathan huffed out a short breath of air. It sounded almost relieved. Garland wasn't sure what either of them had expected. "They know who he is?" Nathan asked. "Have they got a name yet?"

It wasn't the answer Garland wanted to give. "It's looking like his place was some kind of off-the-books rental. We've found no personal effects. It's leased in the name of Carter Stevens, but that's a false name."

Nathan turned away, headshaking. "Then I need to wait for the sketch artist. I _saw_ his face." He caught his breath sharply. "If my hands weren't like they are... if I'd never had this problem... He'd have had everything he wanted from me, then he'd have blinded me."

"Son, don't get maudlin." Garland tried to grasp Nathan's arms again, get him to face him properly. "You beat him."

"I _played_ to him," Nathan snapped. "I'm _going to_ beat him."

"Hunh," Garland grunted. "Fine. We'll figure out the sketch, or composite, whatever. Then we're going back to the hotel. But first of all you're going to eat something. Guessing you haven't done that, either. Probably can't even tell you're hungry, right?" Nathan shot him a surprised, off-guard glance filled with a sort of stealth horror. "No? Right, because _I_ remember how this works, looking after a kid who can't feel when he hurts himself, when he needs to eat, when he needs to pee." Nathan looked even more horrified by that reminder. "So you're going to listen to your old man for once. I'll talk to Dodge. See if we can hurry things up with this bastard's picture. You hearin' me, Nate?"

"I'm not eight years old!" he seethed back, standing ramrod straight with both hands fisted at his sides, exactly as he had when he was eight years old. "Don't talk to me like I am!"

"No, you're not. But this, this affliction, it's the same as back then. We need to deal with it, and you were pretty damn young to remember how to do that, but _I_ know how. So we do this together, just like last time. How 'bout it?" He held out a palm.

Nathan held up both of his and backed off a step. "Okay. All right. You... win." He made his words sound disgusted, and backed off the rest of the steps toward the door, out of the room. 

"The hell you going?" Garland demanded.

"Bathroom," Nathan said succinctly, and took himself off.

Garland rolled his eyes and groaned.

*

"Weird fucking small town cops are getting weirder," Dodge said, holding up the results of the police sketch. Wuornos and Wuornos had flown out of there like they had a family funeral to get to after completing it. Junior hadn't looked particularly traumatised or hurting; he'd looked tight-lipped and angry and kept falling over his own feet.

Her partner stuck a coffee in front of her. She was aware that he had initially been kinder on the subject of small town cops, but thought he was starting to come around to her viewpoint. "Got a good eye, though." Peppers tweaked the piece of paper with his fingertip. "Landlord recognised it at once."

"I swear I wasn't figuring on throwing Junior into the arms of this creep," Dodge said, gulping the coffee. "He seems alright, considering, but I don't get it."

Peppers, who'd conducted the interview which had become that very flat transcript, screwed up his face. "I think Nathan Wuornos is hiding some kind of chronic condition. Maybe something that could see him excluded from the force."

Dodge's attention perked sharply. "Which one's Nathan, again?" She got treated to an eyeroll for that. "Okay, okay..." 

"I mean, his _dad_ is their Chief of Police. If anyone could get away with it..."

"Don't know about anything else, but do you think he's HIV positive? He _did_ pretty much own to being gay. If he is, you think that in the circumstances, the blood tests the doctors drew in the hospital might cover that -- and any number of other things -- even if he hauled himself out of there quick."

"I don't know," Peppers said. "I don't know what it is. Doesn't have to be that. Say, Wuornos and Wuornos went back to their place, are _we_ going home today? I know we started late yesterday, but it's drawing into one hell of a long shift. Orlson will be in here busting our asses about it when he realises. You know how he is about 'maintaining optimum function'." He made a voice just for that phrase.

Dodge shook her head. "I don't give a shit about Orlson. For the first time, I have a _picture_ of this asshole, even if every lead from his false address and his false name turned out a dead end." Kid had almost been buggered and butchered for the picture, thanks to her.

"If you say so," Jim said, wryly. He held up a slip of scrap paper. "Wuornos asked me to fax a copy of the Bastard's face to Haven PD, see if they can get any recognition back in town."

"Which Wuornos?" Dodge asked.

"Does it matter?" He seemed to regard her answer with genuine curiosity.

"Just wondering if the younger one is still that much on the ball," Dodge said, begrudging it. 

"It was Senior," Peppers said, "but I don't think we've seen the last of either of them, even if they've gone back to their hotel for now. Are you gonna part with that picture to let me send it?"

She handed it over. "I could gladly see the back of them both."

"As you say, KD." He tipped his head at her in irony. "I'm faxing this, then _I'm_ going home. Too old for these long hours any more."

She flipped him off wordlessly.

*

Nathan lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling, feeling nothing. It was mid afternoon and the light bright and the traffic loud outside. Sleep seemed a lofty ambition, despite the lack of pain from his injuries, the lack of feeling from anything. It had been a very long time since he had felt... not-felt like this. He didn't quite understand how he could have gone from so much feeling one running step to none in another and _not noticed_ that transitional moment.

Then again, he'd been eight years old and not noticed how the crushing pain of the impact with the tree and the background of the winter cold had disappeared in an instant, either. Some peculiarity of his mind or his condition. Whatever that actually was. ("Wait'll we get back to Haven," Garland had said, half a dozen times now. "Everything will be just fine when we get back to Haven.")

Dad was chain smoking on the bed next to his, an ugly dressing table and a night stand in the five feet of space between them blocking the view of his face, just leaving the rising curl of smoke. Nathan couldn't complain. Garland only ever did this when he was freaking out, or had been freaking out, and the smoke wasn't a bother. If anything, it was another welcome texture in a world that had gone abruptly very flat.

Nathan kept thinking about the look that had been in his dad's eyes when first he'd laid eyes on him, before Nathan grabbed him and told him he couldn't feel. He couldn't help but wonder what would have been said in that moment, if he'd waited for Garland to say it first.

He kept circling back to that because it was a focus that _wasn't_ the scene that had played out in the torturer-rapist's den, and that line between calculation and cowardice, and all the things about his choices and reactions that he just didn't _know_. He remembered not fighting. He remembered fear -- a lot of that -- and adrenaline. 

The problem with feeling nothing was the lack of distraction. If he could feel, he'd be in pain, but right now, focus was _not what he needed_.

"Doesn't seem to me like you're doing anything resembles sleeping," Garland said caustically, after a while.

He'd seriously thought that would be an option? Nathan shut his eyes briefly: hands on him, and his own surrender. He opened them again. "Can't sleep. Too alert." Terror and adrenaline had already brought their crash, humiliating him further. "How much did they tell you of what happened?"

"That he didn't -- you know." Nathan slid his eyes around to look at his dad in time to catch the embarrassed, not-really-indicative hand gesture he made to that. Nathan snorted, amused despite himself by the sudden display of delicacy. "Cut you instead," Garland said quickly. "And thank God for that."

Would it have changed how dad saw him so very badly, if it had happened the other way? More than-- "You do know I slept with Duke?" Nathan asked, anger jabbing behind the words. " _No_ , Duke -- Duke fucked me. Other way around, too, but Duke absolutely fucked me." He rolled up off the bed, careful how he braced his feet on the floor. 

Garland made a distressed, choking noise and held up his hands in a blocking gesture. "Jesus Christ! Why would you say that, _now_?"

No, it wasn't the point Nathan wanted to make. He stopped. Duke was nothing to do with this, however things had finished, however he'd ended up feeling about it in all the years that followed. The years he dated women. Being in the gay bar, before everything went wrong, it had felt -- he could easily have--

He might've spread for the guy who'd abducted him anyway, if they'd started out normally, over a drink, if he'd _asked_. If Nathan hadn't been on police business. Of course, a willing partner wasn't what this bastard wanted. Some freakish power game; pain and ownership, that was _his_ interest: the handprint-shaped bruising on Nathan's groin attested to that.

Nathan had other interests. He'd spent a long time smothering them. Why the hell was he thinking about this _now_? Garland was right.

"Sorry," Nathan said, tightly. "It's on my mind." He went to stand by the window. There was half a cup of coffee there from when they'd got in about half an hour ago. It would be stone cold by now. He picked it up and drank it, tasting virtually no different from when it had been fresh.

"If that little shit of a Crocker did one whit of anything that wasn't by your consent..." Garland started.

Nathan shook his head and groaned. "Dad, it's not... just leave Duke out of it." Truth was, he'd been surprised dad hadn't gone after Duke with his gun when he'd learned about the nature of their relationship back then, vague and unspecific as it had always remained in the retelling. Until now. "Do you _really_ think I'd let Duke, of all people, get away with anything like that?" He went to refresh his cup, but didn't bother to reboil the water, figuring the remnant in the pot would be good enough. "No, what happened... last night... I played along. Knew I could slip the cuffs soon as he left and gave me a chance to. Didn't want to lose my eyes, or my thumbs, or my dick, so I played along."

"Sounds like sense," Garland said. He sat on the edge of the bed, boot crushing dropped ash into the carpet to hide it. 

Nathan said, "All it feels like is that I didn't fight him."

"Horseshit," Garland snapped back, instantly derisive. He glowered at Nathan, who wished there was anyone else he'd ended up trying to have this conversation with. Oh, he could talk to dad about his old childhood ailment, he was the best person still around who understood _that_ , but couldn't tell him this. This was-- Maybe he could have told Duke, if he hadn't been who the hell knew where. "It'd be like saying you didn't _breathe_."

And he didn't for several seconds, while that hung on the air.

"Fighting smart's still fighting," Garland said, standing up, brushing off his knees. "Just you're too damn used to fighting dumb to know it. Now leave that coffee, lie back down, and go to sleep. It's easy when you can't feel anything, right? Yeah, I remember that excuse for Math class..."

He took the coffee cup out of Nathan's hand, slid a hand around his back, and guided him over to his bed. "I'm still not sleepy," Nathan mumbled, but he sounded like a petulant child even to himself. Garland had just managed to regress him twenty years in one fell swoop. 

"Nonsense," Garland said. "Your old man's right here. Ain't nothing coming for you that this grizzled mug can't scare off."

And Nathan, who _wasn't_ afraid of rapists and tormentors stealing in to get him in the night, who knew damn well he was safe and the only demons around were those Garland couldn't fight, the ones in his own mind, still nonetheless managed to find some bizarre comfort in that. It seemed the instant he curled down on top of the sheets again, with a big, grey hand patting and staying on his shoulder where he could see, even if not feel it, his worries disappeared down into sleep.

*

"This is not going to work. It took longer than a few... than an hour before _breakfast_... to get me functional enough to return to school, I remember _that_."

Gripe, gripe, gripe... They were both cross and up too early, after the too-early night, even with the lack of rest the night before. Garland swatted the air with his hand and said, "Hush! Are you still a scared eight year old? No, damn it, you're a man, despite any goddamn preferences you--" Nathan's glare said _not helpful_. "I don't care about that. Act like a man and... just play with your breakfast." He flapped his hand again. Encouragingly.

Nathan tossed the apple from one hand to the other, almost fumbling it, but not. He narrowed his eyes and squared his jaw back at Garland. 

"Good. Switch up to the orange as well once just the apple gets easier. I had to put in the effort to charm those from the early kitchen staff, you put 'em to use."

"You stole them from the kitchen," Nathan said. 

"That correction supposed to imply that the old man's beyond charming anything, huh...? Whatever, look, you're injured, you had a shock, you can get away with being a bit clumsy." Nathan accidentally threw the apple across the room and Garland sighed. "You just need to do the groundwork. Or we could come clean."

" _No_ ," Nathan said fiercely, and started tossing the orange instead.

Garland wasn't looking to tell any outsiders about any of Haven's Troubles, but Nathan's was convenient to disguise as a medical condition. He got the feeling the kid's own reasons were more to do with seeing its activation as a sign of weakness. Garland had seen Troubles triggered for a lot less than falling into the hands of a knife-happy, dick-happy psycho.

Not that he was sure Nathan acknowledged what this really was. Too young to understand, last time. The next time was looming... never much longer than twenty-seven years, that was what people said, which left them maybe four, maybe five. Nathan would have to get to grips with this for real -- the Troubles and his own Trouble both, probably, though Garland hoped like hell it wasn't another incident on this scale that would trigger it.

He crawled under the bed to pick up the apple, felt his back complaining as he stood up again. Watched for a moment as Nathan tossed the orange hand to hand, eyes down on what he was doing. "Get up and try walking up and down same time as doing that," Garland suggested. Feet and hands both would probably be more use than just hand dexterity for faking normal.

"I barely know I'm walking," Nathan said.

"Scary? It used to be scary." Garland asked, then felt like he needed to excuse the asking. He was tying _himself_ all up in knots over this, now.

"I'm not _scared_. I just feel like my body's not mine." He dropped the orange as it bounced off the splint. It stopped at a furniture leg and he bent to pick it up. He sighed, as he straightened again. "People are afraid of being hurt. They're afraid of pain. Of _something._ Not of absence, not of _nothing_."

"Plenty of people scared of _nothing_ ," Garland countered, "Or else dying would be a lot more in demand."

Nathan grunted, giving him that one. Garland tossed him the apple, and he attempted to juggle both fruit two handed, then one-handed. 

"I can't do that with a full set of working nerves," Garland pointed out. 

Nathan caught both fruit and put them down in frustration. "It's not going to matter, because as soon as I don't pay attention I'm going to _screw it up_. I'd rather practice writing. More chance I'll be asked to do that than juggle."

Garland had to concede that one.

Nathan opined, "It's like having to do everything with tweezers, while wearing boxing gloves," but pen and paper was more about muscle memory than feeling, and all it took was a little practice and readjustment and he had it down again in the space of about twenty minutes.

After that, it was still very, very early, so Garland handed his son the apple and orange again, along with the complimentary biscuits in their little wrappers that had come with the coffee-making facilities in the room, and said, "Practice eating again in private before we go down to public breakfast. I don't want to be sitting there opposite you when blood starts running down your lip 'cause you chewed your tongue again."

"This is humiliating at thirty-one." Nathan brandished the orange.

"Humiliating at fifty-one, too, but Bill Jenks had that stroke a few years back, and he had to re-learn how to eat, too." Garland brewed another coffee. In less than half an hour, they'd be at breakfast with a fresh cup, but he needed it. 

He at least knew that all this would be over as soon as he got Nathan back to Haven. He'd feel again, wouldn't need to re-learn all of this crap, wouldn't be locked into some half-life... Not yet. Garland only wished the kid had enough grasp of the Troubles to believe it, too. But then, if he did that, he'd know this was just a dry run, biding time until those days came back.

Half a lifetime, twenty-seven years -- least it had seemed so, back then. Hadn't felt that way, living it. It wasn't long enough, and Garland did not feel ready, but it couldn't be much longer until the first signs were starting to show. 

Long enough, surely, he pleaded with the universe as a sudden chill went through him, to lull Nathan's Trouble back into quiescence before the danger returned of it being triggered again. He'd not stay this way, back in Haven. There was time...

Halfway through breakfast, at 7:25AM, Garland got a call on his mobile phone from his deputy Bob on duty back at Haven police station.

*

Jim Peppers walked into a station in a chaos of gossip. His partner was predictably moaning in the middle of it. "Have you heard? Haven PD broke the case. Got a name on the real identity of Carter Stevens. Guy walks in on duty this morning, sees his face on the bulletins and says, 'That's my cousin's old drinking buddy.' Fucking small towns." She pulled a face. "Angus Steven Carter. Can you believe it?"

"People are stupid." Peppers shrugged affably. "We tracked down an address yet?"

"Not yet and not that stupid -- isn't like anyone linked it. By the way, Wuornos and Wuornos are on your desk. Junior's giving about as much away as a store mannequin. Cool as anything, doesn't even flinch."

"That's good?" Jim hazarded. "Kid's all right."

"No, it's _creepy_ ," Dodge said. "You did the interview, I read the transcript. If he was ours, the shrinks would be crawling up his ass." She grimaced at the word choice.

Peppers waved her off and continued to their office. Garland Wuornos was sprawled at his desk, filling his chair in a posture that spoke of exhaustion and a flat sense of having absorbed too much shit to give a shit. Nathan Wuornos was literally perched on the edge of the desk, tossing an apple hand to hand despite his splinted fingers, injured feet hovering above his kicked-off shoes on the floor. His body didn't carry any signs of pain, and his face seemed to have been wiped of all capacity for expression. Inclined to be kinder, Peppers could still see what Dodge meant.

Other than the feet, which Peppers could only imagine he was parading due to the bandages and ill-fitting shoes, Nathan had a small cut on his throat under his adam's apple, that Peppers hadn't noticed yesterday -- on closer examination, a cluster of tiny cuts. He looked tense, and stiff, but Garland was the one who looked like he was tired and hurting.

Nathan Wuornos' head jerked up at Peppers' arrival, and he slid off the desk onto his bandaged feet with a heaviness that made Jim wince, even if the younger detective didn't. "It looks like Angus Carter knew the guy who skipped town back in Haven, so we've got some people re-examining whether he actually skipped town."

Peppers gave him an acknowledging nod. He gave the senior Wuornos a more pointed one, but it didn't win him his desk back. In fact, for a moment he thought Garland was going to baldly ask if he had something on his face.

"You been medically cleared?" Peppers switched his attention back to Nathan.

"Yeah. Superficial."

Jim resisted the urge to ask if he'd been psychologically cleared. There was some grey area between the haziness of Nathan's report of what had happened and the short length of time the guy had had hold of him, and the fact he'd got himself out before all the reports of even having a missing officer were straightened out... nobody was actually pushing the subject. His visiting status and the uncooperative nature of his direct superior (his father) was helping muddy that all the more.

Peppers could see, in either case, the gun and the badge the younger man had reclaimed and wore again at his belt. Until yesterday, Peppers would've said the father was the stubborn one. Strong kid, too much pride, too many reasons to be prickly, pain in the ass. Definitely he could come around to Dodge's point of view that the station needed to be rid of its infestation of Wuornoses.

"So it is the same killer," Garland said, like he was continuing a conversation Peppers had walked in on, "which means he started out with murder and settled down to 'mere' abduction and rape. Now, I'm no criminal profiler, but that sounds ass-backwards to me. Why d'you suppose he did that?"

Nathan wandered to Dodge's board with its ugly pin-ups. Nathan's eyes were uglier, and only worsened with the images reflected in his expression. "A specific sexual need. The sense of power. He doesn't _need_ to kill. He marked them, even if he didn't mutilate them. Maybe part of the thrill is in knowing they're still alive."

"Death is careless, is KD's theory." Peppers found himself drawn in, despite himself.

Garland said, "We still don't know what happened to Tommy Decardo."

Since Peppers hadn't a desk, he'd opted to follow Wuornos Jr. So he saw his eyes and the nature of the hesitation as Nathan said slowly, "I'd like to talk to the... victims."

' _Other'_ , thought Jim. He'd been about to say _other_. Crap, and however far the bastard had got -- Jim still didn't believe it constituted all out rape, because the kid wasn't that good a liar -- it was still clear that Nathan had quite definitely internalized it as an assault.

"Then you'd be the only one," he responded gruffly. It earned him Garland's approving look. "Each of those men went through hell. I interviewed two of them myself, after we linked the cases together. Felt like crap making them relive it."

He saw Nathan's face fall. "But afterwards. If we can tell them we _stopped_ him."

"...Yeah." Peppers nodded slowly. "Maybe I could go for being in on that one."

*

"Hey." A shoulder touched his as its owner slid into place next to him at the bar, a brush of electric contact... And maybe Nathan was a touch too keyed-up for this. Certainly the way he jerked around at the simple touch didn't shout that he was comfortable here.

True enough, though, that this kind of establishment _wasn't_ something Nathan was comfortable with, wholly removed from the issue of sexual preference. He'd never been one for going out to hook up, for alcohol-fuelled dating, or much of flirting of any kind. Nor did he feel like he was dressed for it, wasn't like he'd brought many clothing options to Boston -- although Dodge had said something about wholesome white boys that suggested she still thought he matched their perp's preferences.

The man who'd engineered the light touch, at the counter of the noisy bar, laughed at Nathan, but didn't comment on the reaction, merely observed, "New face?"

"I'm visiting Boston," Nathan said. His voice sounded a hoarse burr. He gulped from his drink, more than he'd intended to, trying to fix the dryness in his throat. Didn't intend to get drunk tonight. Not while wearing a wire. Not with the potential of the Chief listening to this later. "I was told this was the place in town to come."

When he'd volunteered for this, he hadn't entertained the prospect of dad reviewing the recordings. Listening to him try to chat up men. The actually unintended innuendo had his face feeling hot and his breath catching.

The man laughed again and said, "They do say that," before leaning past him to order a drink. Again with the brush of -- _clothes_ , not skin, but arm against arm and it seemed to go straight to Nathan's groin. This guy was all dark hair, pale skin, TV good looks and frame-hugging clothes far more expensive than those Nathan was wearing. He matched the profile, incidentally, but so did half a dozen others Nathan could count among the patrons, if you added some leeway for subjective tastes in 'perfection'.

"Then you know this place well," Nathan said as the man was served. "Live local?" It didn't come off casual. It sounded pushy, and way too keen.

"Pretty local." His answer came wry and still amused. "Hey, sorry. I have to get back to my friends."

Nathan noticed the way he tagged onto a group for a minute, but didn't seem to belong, and peeled off fast back to his own corner. The fact he wasn't actually with anyone made it a more pointed rejection. Annoyed that he'd let it sting, Nathan reminded himself he wasn't there to pick up anything except information. Did he think himself irresistible? Hardly... When he turned back to his drink, the barman tipped a shoulder in a shrug, half-sympathetic, half-entertained.

"I was told about this place," Nathan said loudly, annoyed and thinking furiously about the wire, desperate not to provoke any comment that would expand the circumstances of that exchange for listeners. "Also told there've been some problems. Like maybe things aren't so safe in Boston right now. Pretty worrying, when you think about trying to meet someone new."

It was unsubtle, but he could feel the pounding of his heartbeat, could almost imagine he could _hear it_ over the volume of the music and the chatter, and there was only so much he could expect of himself, here, off-balance, trying to work. Maybe they should have sent a younger, heterosexual officer in... someone who didn't have a personal stake or lingering issues. Then again, they hadn't had any other volunteers.

Then _again_ , that theoretical officer might not have got a response; wouldn't have displayed Nathan's dismay at the good-looking man's rejection, which likely informed the wry, assessing once-over that the barman gave him before answering -- even if the guy did think he was hopeless. "Colin over there--" The barman pointed. "He's been following all this. He knew one of the guys taken by that freak. You want to know how to keep yourself safe in town, talk to him. We're all keeping our eyes open now for each other. Can't trust the police to do anything."

_You can_ , Nathan wanted to say, and he still wasn't sure how or where relations had fallen down so badly between police and community here, though he had wondered, uncharitably, if Detective Dodge had been responsible for that original round of interviews. But he clutched the edges of the counter with white-knuckled fingers and looked where the other man was pointing, relief washing through him at the prospect of any kind of information score, at not having put himself through this for nothing, or worse, ridicule back at the station.

"Thanks." He picked up his drink with a nod, and went to join that table.

Colin was too old to be a risk for either the perp's type or the perp, and he was sharp, really sharp, with an attention to detail and level of organisation in the information he'd gathered about the attacks that had Nathan guessing _lawyer_. Rumours and cautionary tales were most of what any new material amounted to. Where not to go, what kinds of approaches not to trust, but there might be some nugget of a clue in there. Nathan hoped Aspin and Peppers were taking notes, because his own head was spinning. He wasn't sure how much he was going to remember of this, later. One of Colin's friends, who was too studiedly effeminate in his mannerisms to appeal to Nathan in particular, was nonetheless making it clear he was undressing him with his eyes, and Nathan was dangerously close to being seduced by a concept. Haven was -- it was not exactly safely anonymous to express his full sexuality there. But he could have driven down to Boston on a few days' leave any time in the last ten years since Duke.

... _Why_ hadn't he? Never thought it even, until now. Because of dad? Because of _Duke_? Because Nathan Wuornos plain wasn't the kind of person who did that?

The man who'd burned his bridges earlier added an extra charge to the lure of that idea by re-inserting his presence -- oddly, because Nathan had thought the expression of non-interest pretty final. He kept sensing attention and looking up to find dark, considering eyes on him from the bar.

It _was_ alluring, but also unsettling, causing suspicion to flare, despite the absolute unlikelihood of venturing out on an exploratory exercise to conduct interviews and attracting the attention of the actual perpetrator. Suspicion that his long-buried desires were kicking him in the ass would be more on the nose, Nathan figured. As if he should even be thinking about this, when he knew the stakes, _knew_ how this community was under threat. Though they seemed to be continuing in spite of it, _he_ should be focusing on his job. After a while, the hot man contributed to his efforts by removing himself from view.

The memory of thinking it flashed through Nathan's mind again later, though, on the street outside the bar when the first electric jolt hit him in the back, scrambling the wire along with his nerve receptors.

*

Alan McMichael, held for thirty-nine days last year, castrated with a hot knife, dumped on a street downtown. He'd tried to move on. He was actually smiling in some of the snaps of him they'd found pinned up behind a giant Cohen Brothers movie poster on Angus Carter's bedroom wall. 

_Sick._ Somehow, despite the total lack of sensation, Nathan's head let him know it was pounding. McMichael wasn't the only one to decorate the walls of the perp's real home. The others had their own collections. Faces they didn't know had collections. Carter had let them go, but he'd never left them alone. Only the one who'd killed himself a month after release had escaped the follow-up attention. Another had moved out of state, and his space was sparser, but still suggested that Carter had been invested enough to pay him a visit at least once in unfamiliar surroundings.

"We can't tell them," he said to Dodge, who'd come in with him. She had her gun still drawn. It was Nathan who'd seen the edges of the pictures beneath the glossy commercial prints, and lifted off the cover to see the continuation of nightmares underneath.

"What does he think they are?" Dodge asked incredulously. "Old lovers?"

Nathan remembered, _I'm going to make sure you enjoy everything..._ and shuddered. He said hoarsely, "Yes." At least... "They're important to him. Living." He couldn't help but wonder what happened if any of them started dating again. Maybe it hadn't happened yet.

And he'd dared to think there might be some _comfort_ to be had in the resolution.

In any case, nothing was resolved, as Angus Carter was very clearly not there.

A few photos from each collection were missing, leaving obvious gaps like accusations. Drawers had hurriedly been opened. All indication was that Carter had left in a hurry. 

Nathan said, "Bob found out where he lived now through his cousins. Maybe one of them passed on a warning that the police had been asking questions."

"We got this address thirty minutes ago!" Dodge did some more cussing about small towns. 

One of the other Boston officers stuck her head around the door. "Neighbour swears that's Carter's car out in the drive and he doesn't have another."

The cold feeling that Carter might still be _there_ and they all might have missed him slammed through Nathan. But they'd checked over the place thoroughly, and maybe everyone was right and he really shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be in a position where he might have to try and use his gun with numb fingers, anyway. 

Dad was downstairs somewhere with Peppers. Garland's swearing carried. Six, maybe seven cops in the house and Nathan wasn't in danger even if Carter _was_ still there. 

With a gun in his hand, he told himself grimly, he wouldn't have been in danger if he was on his _own_. Even if his fingers couldn't feel it. His worries were about the danger to other people, on that score.

"He's gone," Dodge said. "Cleared out. Long haul coach station's not that far away, and for that matter, there was cycling gear in the lobby, but I haven't seen a bike yet. We can go around door to door, though. Search the neighbourhood."

"Coffee was still warm in the kitchen," offered the newly arrived officer. 

"Damn it. _Damn it_! He was here! He's only just left!" She raised her radio and started barking into it to send some people to the coach station.

Nathan heaved a breath. He didn't feel it, but his vision reeled unsteadily and the world gave a small jolt as he caught himself. "There's another chance. If he ducked out right when we got here, he could have seen me arrive. He _watches_." He paused, breathed. "If he's watching... Give him space to do it, and he'll come to me." The two women stared at him. Nathan nodded toward the collections of photographs uncovered on the walls and swallowed, hard. "They're important to him. With me, he didn't... finish. Make him think he has space to approach, and I think he'll try."

Dodge's face closed like a trap. "We are not doing this again."

A great crash and banging from the staircase behind them heralded Garland's arrival on the scene. He grabbed Nathan's elbow, and it was fortunate Nathan saw it in time to tune his reactions. "What the fuck are you doing up here? _We're_ meant to be observing. _You're_ barely getting away with being on duty."

Dodge twitched and said, "My bad."

Something in it made Nathan take a second look at her. Maybe she'd cut him a break. But... being in this room, looking at those pictures... It wasn't doing him any favours. He returned dad's grip, grateful for the support for a moment as he fought off another wave of what might have been nausea, but it was hard to tell. "Okay... if I'm not supposed to be in here..." He glared at them in turn. "I guess I'll just go... stand around outside. And, you know? Whatever you want to do with that." He let go of Garland and spread his hands, then pushed by to head back down the stairs.

It came out pretty nonchalant, considering how violently he could hear his heart pounding inside his chest.

*

Katie Dodge had reconciled herself at an early age to having no beauty; to having the exact reverse of any sort of appeal as a woman. The bonus of that was that she'd always felt that it made her _not a target_ for predators, even if the warnings, the inbuilt paranoia of every woman who lived in this freakin' world still applied. At the same time, she was trained, capable, she did this shit for a living, so all in all, she lived with the relatively strong belief that she was _not a target_. 

Then again, it was pretty difficult to wrap her head around the idea of six foot plus of the Lesser Wuornos as a target. 

She wondered what it felt like from the other side, when that confidence was shattered? Rape was not something men worried about, day to day (the old, ingrained paranoia: don't walk home alone, don't catch the wrong kind of eye, be careful how you dress). Honestly, she wouldn't have the sympathy. Dudes were on top of the food chain and she was emphatically not in the business of giving a shit about things that could take them down a peg. But then she _had_ thrown him on the fire.

For that, for Carter... She'd thought he was due some payback. She'd thought...

It had seemed a good idea at the time.

Instead she was left twitching with nerves after the engineered encounter, spilling her coffee and wishing the meeting had never happened, while Peppers gave her harsh looks from the other side of the room and Nathan Wuornos sprawled, dazed, in a visitor chair, rolling an apple in one hand and chewing the fingers of the other. 

Dodge tried again to drink her coffee without spilling it. Peppers approached her. She didn't want to hear it. "What the hell did you think you were playing at?"

Fine. Shit, she'd misjudged and dragged that poor kid in there, and he'd been too terrified to do a thing, barely even talk. But there was nothing she could do about it now, and Carter was still in there, sitting thinking smug thoughts, thinking who knew what? Thinking about his hands all over a cop. She was the one who'd paraded Nathan in front of him again. Special treat for him. Right.

They hadn't seen each other face-to-face, outside. It had been like a bad joke that Wuornos' lousy half-baked plan even worked. He'd just hung around the vans at the front of the house like a spare part until a pair of the patrolling officers had spied Angus Carter, watching from behind the awful topiary of a neighbour who it turned out was away on vacation, and they'd picked him up. 

Even out there, when she thought about it, the whole thing had been very, very safe, and he'd been standing next to a police van surrounded by fellow officers both seen and unseen, yet Wuornos had looked twitchy and vulnerable the whole time.

He got up before Peppers could continue with his rebuke. Instead, they both turned to watch him cross the room to reach them. Impolite or not, it was like they couldn't _help it._

"Thanks," Nathan said, looking at Dodge. His eyes were still shocky. "At least I got to look him in the eye, while-- Wasn't like the last I saw of him was-- I do feel better." He gave Jim a nod, too. "I guess I might see you both at the trial."

"And who the hell knows when that will be?" Peppers grunted, almost by rote. He lifted a hand a bit aimlessly. "You both heading home now? Have a safe trip."

Garland Wuornos was over at the main door, impatiently gesticulating. 

Nathan set down the apple he'd been playing with all morning on Dodge's desk as he passed, sending it into a spin like a top. His lips curled at some unexplained joke, then he was stalking away on his long, skinny legs.

"Yeah," Dodge called, belatedly, sounding highly insincere to her ears. "You drive safe... Wuornoses."

Garland lifted his hand in a static, similarly insincere wave. He bunched the hand in the fabric of his son's jacket as he got close enough, then all but towed him out of there, though Nathan was walking already.

Dodge sighed as Wuornos Major and Minor exited the police station, and she honestly hoped she _wouldn't_ see either of them when the case came to trial.

Jim Peppers slapped his hand down on top of the spinning apple, stilling it. "Don't do _anything_ else to risk screwing up this conviction," he said. "It's going to be hard enough getting this sicko locked away long enough for all those young men to find some peace. From now on we are by the book."

*

Carter was driving Dodge crazy, keeping asking, "Can I talk to him? Can I see him?" in the most fucking creepy way. Never mind that the object of his freakish lusts was a cop. Last she'd seen Wuornos Jr. herself, he'd been looking grey right after hearing about how they'd picked up Carter after all, even if it had been his idea, but he had to be around the station somewhere.

"You want to see him?" she clipped the words sharply, ignoring the furtive and surprised look of the officer beside her as she turned the interview tape off. "Fine. Let me just see what I can do about that. Hell, you're due a break, ain'tcha, Denvers?"

Denvers' face hardened to a knowing grimace, though one not without its own stiff approval. 

And Dodge could definitely stand to see Wuornos Jr. have to 'subdue' their prisoner with a number of hard kicks to the groin. " _Fell right on his knee, I swear,"_ and by the time she'd routed out Nathan, she already had a whole book of excuses prepared for the occasion. 

"I shouldn't," he said, resisting the pressure of her palm in the centre of his back outside the interview room door like an immovable object. She could see how he _wanted to_ ; see it bad, in the fists white-clenched at his sides, in the set of his jaw, and like fire in his eyes. All hot-and-cold rage, as he should be, even if his thinned, pale lips said, "It's not safe. It's not wise."

"Safe and wise my ass," Dodge said. "What happens in the next five minutes lies between you and me and him and that's a fucking promise."

Least she could do for a fellow officer.

He kept his hands low as he went in.

The needy _want_ in Carter's face disgusted Dodge. Felt like he was molesting Nathan again with his eyes, and the kid, he _hunched_ , body twisting as if protectively around his covered groin. Dodge could see that he didn't like the automatic reaction any more than she did, as he made the effort to consciously uncurl himself.

Carter, on the other hand... His hungry eyes feasted on the belt, badge, gun. "A cop, huh? Then... I'm guessing it wasn't a coincidence that we met."

Dodge shut the door and hesitated with her hand still on it, already on the verge of hauling Nathan right out of there again, but she wasn't ready to admit defeat. She made herself move to take up a position nearer Carter.

"Yeah. A cop." Nathan's eyes burned dully and Dodge saw him fold his hand behind him, over his gun. Saw his fingers slide clumsily over the leather and struggle, and saw how his eyes widened and a hint of panic flashed through his expression. Even though the prisoner was cuffed, and Dodge had her hands on him, and there was no doubt whatsoever that he was safe, safe, _safe_.

"So, you were trying to catch me when I caught you? That's almost like fate."

The guy had slime for a voice. Dodge shoved him, annoyed. She jerked her head indicatively, outside of Carter's view, annoyed at Nathan, too, for being slow on the uptake. He didn't need the damn gun. Just go for it, son, she tried to tell him with her eyes.

"You sick fuck," Nathan said. "Fuck you." He slid the hand that mysteriously failed to find his gun back in front of him, fingers curling uselessly, then turned on his heel and stalked out.

Carter made a noise of dismay and Dodge made her own noise of frustration, and jabbed Carter hard in the ribs with her elbow -- she'd go lower, but it really didn't feel like it was hers to do -- and followed Nathan out, stomping her feet hard, leaving Angus Carter cuffed at the interview desk with whatever of his fantasies he had left to entertain him.

*

"You were supposed to punch him," Garland said, at the town limits, as they drove past a _You are now leaving Boston_ signpost. Birds were perched on it, contemplating supper. Garland could definitely contemplate supper, but he hadn't been about to stay another damned night in that hotel, not when they could be in Haven by daybreak.

"I know." Nathan gave a choked little laugh. "I figured that out."

"So what's the problem? You didn't lay hand on him, kept it all clear-cut. The victims will thank you when the lawyers land."

"I wanted to _shoot_ him," Nathan said, voice a rasp of dark things curling up from the pit of his belly. "If I hadn't been so numb I fumbled reaching for my gun in that moment, I might have done it."

Garland did a double-take and remembered just in time to keep watching the road. He gave a low whistle that came out as just air on the first attempt. "I'm sure that's a... healthy reaction," he commented.

"I think the victims would have thanked me more," Nathan said flatly.

"Yeah? Well, we don't shoot people when they're in custody and in cuffs, and that's why you're still a cop right now, so suck it up and look a bit more cheerful. We're goin' home. No more hotel coffee. No more lumpy mattress and 'no smoking'. No big city--"

"Did you fix the smoke alarms?" Nathan cut in with an edge of irritation and second hand guilt.

"Yes," Garland lied. "All fixed." Not like health and safety wouldn't notice at the next check.

"And the windows?"

"Nothing I could do about that catch." Lie too much and it just got you rumbled. Nathan flung his hands up. "Anyway, we're going home. Everything'll be better in Haven. Just you see." Repeat it often enough, he was sure, he could brainwash even his stubborn fool son into believing it.

Nathan gave him that look that said he thought his old man was crazed and proved he hadn't one whit of understanding about the Troubles at all. "My freak medical condition isn't just going to _disappear_ because we go home," he snapped.

"Now, you know, it's--" Garland waved his hand around next to his head, searching for the word "--psychological. You'll see. Home cooked food and a couple of prods from Eleanor and I bet it'll all come back. You mark my words. Stop glowering at your old man like that, Nathan."

Nathan's eyes practically glowed like the fires of hell in response to that sort of levity.

Yeah, well, _but_ \-- his fault he didn't grasp that it was _true_.

_There's enough time left_ , Garland told himself again, determinedly. _Four years is plenty of time._

Took a serial rapist and the threat of violation and mutilation to trigger it outside Haven, maybe it'd take something comparable to trigger it when the Troubles came back to town. Maybe it'd never be triggered at all. Garland could hope. Hoped, at least, that it wouldn't make it easier for it to return in a year, two years, three.

Earlier, in the hotel room, he'd felt the earth rumble. Standing next to the opened window with his cigarette in his hand, he'd seen the crack deface the frame and spread out over the plaster. 

"All be better once we get back to Haven," he repeated, sliding his hands across the wheel, feeling and taking comfort from the texture and smell of the leather beneath his palms. "All be fixed." He encouraged the pedal with his foot and they sped up a little faster.

"Won't get back to Haven if you put us in a ditch," Nathan commented. "I'd ask if you wanted to swap, but--" He stopped purposely and left that hanging. 

"Why, ain't you just all optimism and light?" Garland sure as hell hoped that driving numb was a learnable skill, for the future. A sign advertising a burger joint ahead zipped past. "Say, you reckon you can eat a double cheeseburger without swallowing your own tongue?"

Nathan broke off heavy contemplating and said, "Yeah," just in time for the turnoff. Garland pulled in.

_"Keep your tongue back and down in your mouth and keep chewing at the same time. Can you do that?" Garland shovelled another forkful of mashed potato into his own mouth, and chewed experimentally. Didn't feel like he was going to swallow or bite down on anything he shouldn't, so he nodded encouragingly to eight year old Nathan and kept going, watching as the kid did the same. "Not too far back and down, just kind of hold it in the middle there. It's like... you've got to be more aware of where everything is, if you ain't gonna feel it."_

_Nathan giggled at his dad spraying mashed potato, and then pressed his lips closed and his hands over his lips lest he risk doing the same._

_They hadn't made much of a dint in the mashed potato mountain he'd cooked up and put in the centre of the table between them, yet._

_"It's all right," Garland said, after he'd swallowed. "Messy eating won't lose you any points. Not in front of me, and definitely not today. This is just practice for when you're in front of other people. Don't matter if it's only me, Nathan. We're figuring this out, is what we're doing. Don't you worry. Doesn't matter if you can't feel anything. We're gonna figure this out together."_

_Nathan swallowed, then opened his mouth, sticking his tongue out to show no blood, no new bite marks. Couple of healing marks from the last few days. "I think I did it." Eight year old Nate's voice was thick and fluffy from keeping his mouth wide while he spoke._

_"You did!" Garland cheered. "Good." And he felt his son's smaller hand reach across and curl over his on the table; even if Nathan didn't._

They walked out of the burger joint and back across the parking lot ten minutes later. Garland was already falling on his food like a man starved. Nathan, bereft of the art of multi-tasking for the time being, was waiting until they were seated again in the car. Garland couldn't guess what Nathan was thinking -- kind of a lot of options for what he had on his mind right now, and some of them were worse than his Trouble. Didn't think there was much chance it was the same sorts of things that were on Garland's mind, until Nathan said quietly, "Dad? I'm -- I _am_ glad you were here, these last few days. I mean--"

Way to catch a man out halfway through his supper. Garland choked and grunted, and patted Nathan a few times on the shoulder. "Hell, I know," he said, gruffly, mouth full. "Get in the car and eat your burger, son."

END


End file.
